Throughout her career, Ms. Baer has been a champion of creative collaboration between the public and private sector. She has worked with city leaders and smart city companies, worldwide, for over 25 years, helping them discover the power of partnerships across city ecosystems to build trust, support city innovation and discover new paths to bigger, bolder urban transformation. In 2019 Ms. Baer was given the Smart City Leadership Award at the Global CSR Conference in Mumbai, India.
Ms. Baer leads Personal Cities, http://personalcities.org/, a smart city company focused on city identity and placemaking, social inclusion and equity, climate actions and the acceleration of digital technology investments to support innovators and entrepreneurs.
In December 2019 Ms. Baer and her colleague, Dr. Lawrence Jones, released the whitepaper, “Rethinking, Reimagining, Redesigning Global Urbanization: The Hard Questions for Urban Stakeholders,” https://tinyurl.com/y7vfmrag, They developed the concept of “Question Storming” to get to the heart of the some of the world’s most intransigent problems advocating that “to change the world we must ask questions that disrupt the world,” and conducted 50 sessions with 400+ participants representing 30 countries, asking “How Can We Rebuild Trust in a Broken World?” Ms. Baer and Dr. Jones published their research, “How to Rebuild Trust: Question Storming to Create a Platform for Thinking Differently and Taking New Actions in 2022 (bit.ly/REBUILDING_TRUST). They will publish their book on “Rebuilding Trust” in 2025.
Ms. Baer is the Smart City Chief & Master Plan Designer for Urban Icon Global (https://www.urbaniconglobal.com/), focused on brand strategy, marketing and innovative community and youth district plans. Urban Icon International is a model of Sports and Entertainment developments in cities across the continent of Africa. As a driver for economic stability and social engagement, every project is designed to host world class sports events, international conferences and high-profile concerts, With state-of-the-art advanced technology and an innovative “fan experience,” Urban Icon is creating a transformative infrastructure that will enhance every urban community and be the catalyst for re-imagining a more promising future in Africa.
Ms. Baer is also the Brand Ambassador for SmartCitiesWorld, (https://www.smartcitiesworld.net/), the London-based world-leading platform for sharing ideas to solve urban challenges that enable us to live in more resilient, sustainable, safe, and prosperous environments.
She is a Special Advisor to “Saving the City: Remaking the American Metropolis,” (https://savingthecity.org/ a unique documentary film series highlighting successes and failures of urban redevelopment across North America to create awareness of the challenges and opportunities cities face.
Ms. Baer is on the Global Advisory Board of Leading Cities ((https://leadingcities.org/accelicity) and serves as a judge and mentor at the Leading Cities QBE AcceliCITY competition—a global event to evaluate entrepreneurs whose ventures utilize smart city solutions to address risk, equity and sustainability in our urban environment. She is on the Advisory Board for Smart Cities Expo USA, Smart City Expo Miami and is an Honorary Advisor to the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, Inc.
Ms. Baer has advised a number of cities in the US, Europe, India and the Middle East and has consulted to smart technology companies including UrbanLeap, http://www.urbanleap.io/, a cloud-based innovation management platform that empowers cities to collaborate directly with the public/private sectors, Cityzenith, https://cityzenith.com/, a leading urban digital twin platform provider and Ubiwhere, https://www.ubiwhere.com/, a “new tech” firm imagining innovations for smart cities, telecom and R&I. She is an Advisor to Citibeats, https://citibeats.net/, an AI firm focused on helping governments find ways to listen to and engage everyone in a community in real time. Citibeats provides invaluable insights to help urban leaders know the true concerns and issues across a community.
In 2018, Ms. Baer was a member of the Board of Directors of CIVIQ Smartscapes, based in Boston, and later became the Chief Marketing Officer where her team built a strong brand for CIVIQ’s digital kiosks through events, social media and thought leadership, creating a new awareness of CIVIQ across industries and geographies.
She is the former Senior Director for Alliances at the Smart Cities Council, and has led business development efforts at Speechworks, The Discovery Channel, ATT, Nextel/Sprint, Ridge Global and Bloomberg Government.
She is currently a member of the Women Business Collaborative Advisory Council, where she has led Mayoral Roundtables to accelerate recovery and prosperity of Small and Medium Enterprises in the US. She serves on the Steering Committee of the Business Insights International SME Network where she has hosted insightful “Question Storming” sessions focused on Rebuilding Trust, Placemaking, High Streets, Mental Health and the Climate Crisis. Ms. Baer is a member of Dentons Smart Cities and Communities Think Tank. She is a Global Ambassador for the Edison Electric Institute where she
works to showcase the unique collaboration opportunities for utilities and smart cities around the world.
She has served as a board member and advisor to several professional and civic organizations, including Leading Cities, Cityzenith, CIVIQ Smartscapes, Nektria, UrbanLeap, Citibeats, The GreenBiz Group, the UN Foundation, Friendship Place and the Washington Bach Consort.
As a professional speaker and moderator, Ms. Baer has spoken at Smart City, Energy, Infrastructure, Technology, Climate, Sustainability, Disaster Recovery and Digital Signage conferences, worldwide. From 2016-2019 Ms. Baer lived and worked in Europe—Germany, Spain and Italy—and returned to her home in Washington, DC in 2020. Most recently, Ms. Baer has been interviewed for podcasts including, “Wirelessly Yours,” “Tomorrow.City,” “Been There, Done That,” “The Market and the Good,” “Remaking the American City TV and “Saving the City.”
Ms. Baer has a BA from the University of Missouri and an MBA in Marketing from Georgia State University. She is a graduate of the Global Advanced Management Program at Georgetown University.
Ms. Baer believes that the smart city future is bright. “We must take bigger, bolder actions to meet the challenges of the pandemic, income inequality, social and racial injustice, political divisiveness, population growth, diversity and inclusion and the climate crisis. Our commitment to improving urban life and our enduring collaborative relationships will enable us to create a future that all of us want to visit.”